Staying Strong During Recovery

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Americans spend a whopping 60 billion dollars annually on weight loss diets and products annually*. With that being said, I think it is safe to assume each of us knows someone at any given moment who is trying to lose weight or eat healthier. Try opening a magazine or the newspaper, turning on the TV, or listening to the radio without coming across a weight loss ad. We live in a society that is constantly bombarded with the idea that thinness needs to be high on the priority list. We live in a society that glamorizes and often requires us to fit a certain body type.

Living in this kind of society is difficult enough for a “normal eater,” let alone someone in recovery from an eating disorder. When I first left treatment where diet talk was strictly prohibited, I remember being completely shocked and hyper aware of the constant, never ending food talk. It felt overwhelming. It made me feel like there was something wrong with me; like I was the outsider going against the norm. Recovery can be a lonely place for this reason. To make things worse, sometimes when I voiced my struggles and politely asked others to limit diet talk around me, it often backfired. Or people might comment about how I was eating “unhealthy” if I had poptarts for breakfast. That was difficult to hear considering I just spent months retraining my brain to be okay eating similar fear foods.

Luckily, over the years I have developed a thicker skin and come up with some strategies to help me deal with this ever present trigger. Here are some ways to stay strong in your recovery while living in a diet-obsessed world:

Unfollow health/diet centered social media sites

And follow sites that promote recovery and all body types instead. For example:

Even though it can feel overwhelming and nearly impossible to live in this diet obsessed world, it is important to keep in mind there are ways to make it happen and put your recovery first. For me, it feels incredibly empowering to know I do not need to allow others to influence the choices I make for myself today. I spent way too many years caught up in my eating disorder to waste the precious time I have now worrying about weight and numbers. If I can do it, with time and a little practice, you most definitely can do it, too.

Kelsi Cronkright is a 28 year old woman in recovery from both anorexia and alcoholism. She is currently in the final year of her social work degree and has plans to use her past experiences to help those with similar struggles. Kelsi also has her own personal blog (Progression Obsession), is a writer for Libero Network, and hopes to break the social stigma in involved in what it means to be an addict

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